


Encounters

by LeDiz



Series: The 48: StH 2020 [1]
Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Genre: Adjustment Periods, Coping and the lack thereof, Found Family, Gen, prompt-fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:15:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22753831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeDiz/pseuds/LeDiz
Summary: Meeting a little blue alien and introducing him into their lives should've been weirder and harder than it was. But maybe not as easy as it seemed to be, either.
Series: The 48: StH 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1641913
Comments: 10
Kudos: 359





	Encounters

The weird thing about adjusting to having a little blue alien in his life was not, strangely, the little blue alien. It was how _easy_ it was to adjust to the little blue alien.

“I feel like this should be stranger,” Maddie said as she sat down beside Sonic, who was lounged back on the couch with her Switch but also watching the news, as well as hovering over Tom’s shoulder as he scrolled through websites about the best methods to patch walls _and_ playing fetch with Ozzy outside. “You’re an alien. My kitchen is literally covered in bullet holes. My husband was a national terrorist forty-eight hours ago. I feel like I should be freaking out right now.”

Sonic paused his constant movement, all of his after-images coalescing into one standing in front of Maddie with Ozzy’s ball in hand. “Think how it is for me,” he pointed out, “Seventy-two hours ago, the only human I’d ever actually spoken to was Crazy Carl, my favourite human on the planet had shot me, and I’d just discovered I can make blue lightning come outta me. And now I’m playing fetch with a dog I kinda consider a rival. It’s super weird.”

“Yeah, but you’re an alien. Everything about this should be weird to you,” she said. “Meanwhile, _I_ have to cope with realising I’m jealous about not being an alien stalker’s favourite human.”

Tom looked up over his laptop to smirk at her, and she raised her eyebrows in a mock-pointed look. “I’m losing out to a man who stuck you in his dirty overnight bag alongside his spare _underwear_.”

“True,” Sonic said, absently tossing Ozzy’s ball from one hand to the other, “But gotta be honest: I’ve never really understood the issue you guys have with underwear. It seems useless to me. Fur is just so much more convenient!”

“Something about that just sounds so incredibly gross,” Tom interjected absently. While a disgusting tangent, the point was still more interesting than the debate about wet versus powdered plaster he was reading.

“You know, humans probably did have fur once upon a time,” said Maddie. “We evolved not to need it.”

Sonic lifted his free hand in a luxurious shrug that was probably supposed to be smug. “And I evolved to be ridiculously handsome. One of our species got it wrong, and I’m not convinced it’s mine,” he said, before one of his ears flicked around, a sure-fire sign his attention was splitting and soon to be lost. But rather than rush back to the Switch or out into the garden or any number of half-expected things, Sonic followed his ear to turn and focus on the news broadcast, prompting both Tom and Maddie to look up at it as well.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was a report on what had happened in San Francisco. Mobile phone footage tracked Robotnik’s strange plane roaring through the city, while another image got up close and personal with some of the cartridges left behind. The voice over made it clear that the public were cutting off the idea it could have been some kind of accident or natural disaster at the pass. But everyone was still a little surprised that the government hadn’t even tried to cover it up, openly ‘admitting’ it had been a ‘rogue terrorist’ with advanced drone and holographic technology trying to seem like a global threat by setting off explosions at a few major landmarks around the world while actually targeting San Francisco.

“That is not the story I was expecting,” Tom commented, and Maddie hummed her agreement.

Sonic, on the other hand, was quietly moving closer to the television until he could touch the screen, his eyes flicking rapidly over the images.

“Don’t worry, buddy,” Tom said, even as he pulled up another search browser to try and find any sightings of blue aliens outside Green Hills. “It seems like they’re blaming this whole thing on Robotnik, and if anyone saw you on camera it would’ve been the first thing they showed. You’re safe.”

He didn’t immediately answer, instead listening to the anchor wrap up the story by confirming that thankfully, there had been no fatalities in the attack. As the next story moved on to politics, Sonic let his hand drop and stepped back, his brow furrowing as his eyes shifted away.

“Sonic?” Maddie prompted. She glanced at Tom, who shrugged warily. It was rare compared to his incessant chatter and hyperactivity, but he’d seen Sonic’s moods suddenly shift like this several times over the last few days. He wasn’t ready to call it unusual or even worrying yet, since Sonic had only gone nuclear that one time on the highway when he’d been angry. Maddie, however, hadn’t seen the quiet sadness yet, and so hunched forward the same way she did when their niece got upset. “Don’t worry. Even if something happens, you know we won’t –”

“I didn’t realise how much damage we caused,” Sonic said suddenly. “I was so focussed on getting away, I didn’t think about where Eggman was shooting.”

Maddie blinked, and Tom frowned, because he was a county sheriff and he honestly hadn’t thought too much about it either. He’d kind of taken it as given, unfortunately.

“No one could blame you for that,” Maddie said gently. “Robotnik was trying to kill _you_.”

“Yeah, but… no fatalities,” he said, repeating the anchor’s words. His gaze was flicking around the floor as if searching for a trap. “No fatalities means… If they meant that no one got hurt, that’s what they would have said, right? They’d say something like ‘no one was seriously injured’. Or – or it should’ve been ‘no one was hurt in the attack’. That’s what it should’ve said! If no one got hurt, that’s what they should’ve said!”

Tom set his laptop aside and shifted closer to the edge of the couch, while Maddie slid onto her knees, hands up and out the way she did when preparing to catch a panicked animal. “Sonic –”

“If no one got hurt, they should’ve said so! But they just said no one’s died! That means people got hurt, and people got hurt badly!” he said, stumbling back a little further away from her. He dropped Ozzy’s ball, his hands rising up toward his face. “People got hurt because of me! That’s what they’re saying!”

“Robotnik was shooting missiles at you in a crowded city, Sonic,” Tom pointed out carefully, “It’s a miracle _you_ survived, let alone everyone else.”

“But no one should’ve gotten hurt!” he insisted. “I should’ve done something! I should’ve saved them!”

“Hey, hang on,” Maddie said, but Sonic wasn’t listening. He was breathing fast, his eyes staring around at nothing, his fists curling awkwardly against his chest like he wasn’t sure what to do with them.

His quills were starting to glow.

“Sonic, you gotta calm down,” warned Tom. “What happened in San Francisco wasn’t your fault.”

“Of course it was!” he snapped back, his eyes finally stopping their constant movement to instead lock onto Tom. “If I hadn’t been there and Eggman hadn’t been chasing me, no one would’ve gotten hurt. If I hadn’t freaked out before, no one would’ve known I was here and no one would’ve come looking for me and Robotnik wouldn’t have come after me and he wouldn’t’ve had my quill and he wouldn’t’ve been able to use that crazy ship of his and he wouldn’t have been able to hurt anyone!”

“That’s a long way to go to blame yourself,” Maddie pointed out, but Sonic just stared at her instead.

“Yeah, I do that. Go long distances, I mean. Usually in a split second or less,” he said, only to look back at the floor. But the distraction did seem to have quietened his quills a little, and after another second he closed his eyes, looking more resigned than panicked. “Just like getting people hurt because I screwed up. That’s something I do, too.”

“Sonic,” Maddie murmured, obviously trying to argue, but he just shook his head.

“I gotta go.”

And then he was gone, only a blue glow and the faint smell of ozone to show he’d been there at all.

But before they could do more than look up at each other, he was back, snatching the Switch from where he’d left it on the couch. “Wanna finish this game,” he said, and then disappeared again.

Maddie huffed out an exasperated laugh, and even Tom had to smile, but when they looked back up at each other, the humour quickly faded.

A lot of people had gotten hurt. They’d become friends with a blue alien that moved at the speed of… well, his name _implied_ sound, but it seemed faster than that sometimes. Their kitchen still looked like a warzone and they were quietly bracing for some government agency to come and arrest them both.

Even if everything felt like it was quietly calming down, their alien encounter had not been nearly as smooth as they were pretending it was.

Bringing that little blue alien into his life was going to take some time to adjust to.

**Author's Note:**

> The 48 is a collection of stories, unfinished, unedited, unplanned, and then posted on Ao3 in case they actually go somewhere or someone wants to adopt them. This particular one may end up as a series based on an old prompt set called 15 tables, or something, or it may go nowhere. We'll see.
> 
> I ADORED the new movie. Yes, the end of the last fight was pretty... egh, but who the heck cared? I will be heartbroken if we don't get a sequel in a few years, finding out the Echidna Tribe needed Sonic for the Greater Good and finding out about Chaos and Sonic having to leave his found family behind and... -sob-
> 
> Moving on...


End file.
